Why is our Assemblyman looking into the past when we have present day concerns in our community for him to spend his time on including dirty streets, worsening local traffic, vacant storefronts, a neighborhood that is rapidly becoming unaffordable for many of us? Could it be he just doesn’t want to deal with the reality and is attempting to either divert our attention or make us believe he is doing something? With all due respect, I believe that on September 9th we should make him history.

HistoryRules

Please, not caring about history is extreme ignorance.

BrooklynBus

You are 100% correct. Last week I finally got around to watching part of the 12 hour series about the history of NYC by Ric Burns that Channel13 showed in 1999. If you think it is bad now, you should have lived in Manattan between 1830 and 1870 when we had financial depressions every 20 years and rioting and lynchings in the streets were regular occurrences.

The graft and corruption by Boss Tweed was unspeakable billing the taxpayers $12,000 for a roll of paper towels. The living conditions for the Blacks and Irish made the tenements of the Lower East Side appear like luxury condos. Yes, those were te “good old days”.

If they taught this type of stuff in school, I might have taken an interest in history.

Subway Stinker

I recommend “An Empire of Wealth”,by John Steele Gordon. a history of American economic power. It will make you glad you are not living in the good old days of the 19th century. Middle class and working class folks like us were squashed like bugs by the ups and downs of the reckless rich.

BrooklynBus

Thanks. The program I saw glossed over the reckless rich. I would like to know more. After my trip last year to Newport RI, I saw those amazing mansions built as “summer cottages” for only six months usage by the ultra rich. What today would take 50 years to build was completed in two years.

And I doubt that the percent of “rich people” in the population in NYC even amounted to 1%. There really was no middle class to speak of except for soneof the merchants. You were either ultra rich or ultra poor. Unfortunately, we are headed back in that direction.

Horatio Caine, CSI Miami

I am no fan of Cymbrowitz, but consider this: Henry Ford once said “History is bunk”, but George Santayana said “those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it”. Ford was a well regarded anti-Semite (along with his pal Tom Edison) so I’ll go with Santayana, who has a better reputation. Study history, it can’t hurt.